Van Halen, Government Surplus, & Me

Most of you know I spent the late 80s, 90s, and early 2000s buying and selling military surplus from the local DRMOs. Most of the lots I purchased were mixed lots. I would try to pre-sell the tank, truck, aircraft, and vehicular parts, and keep the left-overs for my warehouse/store. The surplus has pretty much dried up, and I'm winding down my business, so I've started selling my misc. items on ebay.

I found a box of snap hooks that I have probably had for close to 30 years,. and decided to put them on the bay. There are THOUSANDS of these type snaps for sale, so sales were sporadic at best. Then, two weeks ago I had a sale, with a message asking how many I had. I only had 24 or so, and gave him the count. He decided to buy them all. After I shipped them, I had to be and ask why he wanted these particular snaps. He was kind enough to explain.

It seems that Eddie Van Halen has quite a following, and this year a limited amount replicas of his 1978 "Eruption" guitar have been produced. They come with the "studded chain strap" like he had on the guitar, but the new snap hooks are different. To most it doesn't matter, but to die-hard perfectionists, they want the real thing. My buyer was sharp enough to spot these. Here are some photos. The ones on the left are the ones he got from me.

The ones on the right are the same brand, same part number, but obviously manufactured somewhere else, And since I've had these as long as I have, it puts their age right about when the EVH strap was made.

Here's more photos

I found three more in the warehouse, and just shipped them to him no charge. He wanted to pay me, but I told him the story was payment enough. They'll make some EVH fan happy.

I handled a couple genuine EVH geetars he was still using in the late 1970s and as "used to" describes above, the thing was covered in heavy strips of tape: one w/ black, the other w/ red. Kramer brand geetars IIRC.